Wednesday, December 05, 2007

MIKE HUCKABEE

Team Huck v. The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post whacks at Huckabee.

Joe Carter, Huckabee's e-press guy responds:

Proving once again that they don't have editors (or standards), the Huffington Post tries to rehash a decade old story as a "shocking revelation."

From the article by Murry Waas: "Confidential Arkansas state government records, including letters from these women, obtained by the Huffington Post and revealed publicly for the first time, directly contradict the version of events now being put forward by Huckabee."

Not exactly. Mr. Waas obviously can't do a LexisNexis search. Notice the last line, "A spokesman for Huckabee confirmed the office had received the letter and would consider it along with other information it has received on the case." Governor Huckabee did consider that information—which is why Dumond was never pardoned.

He attaches the Lexis-Nexis callup of the story, which indeed includes:

I was raped  by Dumond,  woman says  Charges dropped  in '76 DeWitt case

BYLINE: KEVIN FREKING, Democrat-Gazette Capitol Bureau

SECTION: NEW; Pg. 1B

LENGTH: 530 words

A DeWitt woman who says Wayne Dumond broke into her apartment and raped her in 1976 is asking Gov. Mike Huckabee not to release Dumond next month...

"I have spent enough sleepless nights with my eyes glued on my bedroom door for fear someone would enter without me seeing them," she said in a letter to the governor. "It has only been since he has been denied parole in recent years that I have felt a small bit of relief from my anxiety of dealing with his possible release."

A spokesman for Huckabee confirmed the office had received the letter and would consider it along with other information it has received on the case.

The good news for Team Huck is this makes the HuffPo look bad. The bad news for them is that talk about the release of Wayne Dumond can only hurt their candidate.

UPDATE: A rival campaign notes this sentence in the HuffPo story...

"There were no letters sent to the governor's office from any rape victims," Huckabee campaign spokesperson Alice Stewart said on Tuesday when contacted by the Huffington Post.

... and chuckles that Carter has effectively demonstrated that Stewart responded with inaccurate information.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Round two, from Huffington Post's Nico Pitney:

The response from the Huckabee campaign is disingenuous and deeply misleading. Are they truly claiming that this story is 'old news' because one letter — out of a dozen that we have obtained — was once reported in a small Arkansas paper. What the public has not known about Huckabee until now is that he was warned repeatedly — beginning in 1996 and up until Dumond's release in 1999 — that this convicted rapist had raped before, and would likely strike again. Huckabee ignored these victims' pleas, and helped secure Dumond's release anyway. That is news.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Carter writes in:

That "rival campaign" should have added the sentence that follows what they quoted:

"There were no letters sent to the governor's office from any rape victims," Huckabee campaign spokesperson Alice Stewart said on Tuesday when contacted by the Huffington Post. Subsequently, however, the campaign provided a former senior aide of Huckabee's who did remember reading at least one of the letters."

We contacted Waas as soon as we found that our spokesperson had given him inaccurate information.

You expect this sort of thing from HuffPo but intentional deceit by fellow Republicans is beyond the pale.

12/05 09:13 AMShare